New Arrivals at the Farm!

This morning I stumbled bleary eyed with my travel mug filled with tea over to my car. Spent 5 minutes de-icing the car windows with my hands shivering (Karin & Andrew I’m very jealous of your summer right now) and then disaster struck. My car battery went dead.

No zoo for me today :-(

And so, instead of going today, I thought I’d write you the blog post that has been outstanding all week (I’ve been meaning to do it really I have but my blogging website is one of those (seemingly random) websites which kills our internet connection. Hence I have to carefully prepare everything so that I can get in and out in the space of a few minutes (before it notices I’m on there).

So last Sunday was my first week back after Christmas (and the previous bad weather) and got placed on the farmyard section. This has got more interesting the last few times; as well as looking after the farm, the section is also responsible for the Studio and all the private areas and the last few times I’ve been asked to carry out tasks there as well.

I start with some bad news, the last time I was in (back at the beginning of December); Doris the badger-faced sheep had just died. I don’t know the cause but I’m guessing it was purely old age – I think she had been around forever. She was a lovely sheep, always after food and you had to try and clean out her enclosure with her in it, which she sometimes mad incredibly difficult.

I feel I should place a picture of her here but I’ve looked through my catalogue of photos and for some reason I just don’t seem to have one. Though there could perhaps be one on my other camera. If there is, I’ll add a photo later.

Edit: I found a photo on my other camera. Here's a picture of Doris with Rodney the rooster who used to share her enclosure.

There were a couple of new arrivals in the farm, two, quite frankly, adorable little ponies. Here they are:

Ok, so I have a major soft spot for anything equine and these were no exception. I was talking to Josh who runs the section, apparently one (Pegasus, with his head over the fence) has other shows to do and so will be leaving the zoo again very soon, however he’s hoping that they’ll be able to keep the other one for a longer period of time.

I’m not sure that Nancy will enjoy a continued presence however, since I’ve already made her share the carrot that I managed to hoard for her.

As I mentioned, I’ve now been given the opportunity to care for the animals which are kept out of the public eye, these are some of the ones used for the shows.

In the Studio itself there are 4 cages, 2 belonging to little tiny hedgehog type creatures, one so a snake, and the other to a pair of bearded dragons.

Outside, there are two enclosures for meerkats, including a couple of babies, and then in another small building there are currently two enclosures for skunks. There is a picture of two of the skunks – It’s not the best picture since my basic camera struggles indoors and it’s not easy to take a clear picture of albino skunks with the flash.

The white one decided to get out of the enclosure and walk around the room for a bit. Which I was told they do, but of course I was worried because having never done it before, I wasn’t sure how to get them in again, but eventually she just wandered back in on her own and I (as usual) was worried for nothing.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable day and I loved being back at the zoo. I’m kind of sad that I’m not at the zoo today, although to be fair Neal did give me a battery and jump leads so I could go and then get myself back again, but I’m going to spend the day working on my Earthwatch presentation instead.